Tata unveils plans to revive Nano sales, will they work..?

Tata Nano once again  headlines due to it’s pathetic sales performance. In last month  car sales in India  recorded a healthy growth of 21 percent while our little wonder’s sales took a nose dive. Tata Motors could sell only 509 units of Nano’s in last month. Tata Motors is now in the mission of reviving Nano sales  by launching various initiatives. Tata Motors has recently conducted a confidence building exercise among their suppliers. Needless to say, many tie-1 supplier including many well known multi national companies have invested huge money eying gigantic sales figures of Tata Nano.

“It was a confidence-building exercise. Vendors were given a sneak preview of demand and supply scenario and projections in the coming months,” said a Nano vendor, who attended the meeting with Tata top brass in Mumbai. Another important faction, Tata dealers have been informed about company’s plans to introduce various finance scheme through various small and large financial institutions. Earlier Tata officials  said that main stream financial institutions are reluctant to offer finance for Tata Nanos as the loan amount is too small.

Nano’s mother plant at Sanand in Gujarat operations came to a halt as the sales outlook is bleak for coming days as well. “There is no plan to stop the production of Tata Nanos in January. On the contrary, the Sanand plant is producing as per a plan, the objective of which is to gradually ramp up production. There is a market potential for more than 15,000 cars a month,’ said company officials.

In addition to these steps, company is planning to set up 800 additional Tata Nano outlets in rural areas to improve product awareness. Today Tata Motors announced an extended warranty scheme for Nano. According to Tata, now company is offering  four year warranty for Nanos including those are already sold. But we really doubt an extended warranty can do a magic, as warranties are always attached with many ifs and buts.

Since it’s launch in March 2009, six Nanos met with spontaneous fire incidents. The bad publicity attracted by  series of fire incidents damaged Nano’s image very badly. Last  month Tata Motors had announced an optional safety upgradation for Nanos, ironically Nano sales dropped drastically even after that announcement. To worsen the situation Nano witnessed many price revisions as well.

Tata Motors made  Nano possible  when everyone declared that task is impossible. We hope with same passion  Tata Motors will come out of this situation as well.

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